'Growers First' Start First "Organic Ministry" Among Coffee Growers

Fifteen months ago coffee reached a 100-year low in price, affecting 25 million small coffee farmers around the world. All are in the equatorial belt, and are mostly poor, unreachable subsistence farmers.

Most of these families will make less than $300 for a year's work. This exerts enormous pressure on young men in the regions to leave their families and seek economic opportunities in restaurants, fields and factories.

Dave Day, founder of 'Growers First', is doing the ministry work of the gospel among small family coffee farmers in Oaxaca through multi-faceted Christian aid projects.

Day was in the coffee business for over 10 years, buying his coffee through brokers, before he made his first trip to the remote villages in Oaxaca where coffee is cultivated. He was introduced to these farmers by a missionary.

"I had no idea how diligently the coffee was prayed over by some of these Christian coffee farmers who were first reached by Wycliffe Bible Translators in the early 1950s and early '60s," Day says. "To see these men leave their villages and their wives of many years was heartbreaking,"he says. "These men were farming their father's and grandfather's land."

In the coffee growing region there are more than 40 other villages like the one Day visited spread over 400 square miles, with about 10,000 coffee-growing families descended from indigenous Indians.

When Day returned home, he and his wife Dallas, began to dream of a way they could help coffee farmers improve their lives economically and spiritually. "We thought if we could add value to their coffee in the general marketplace, we could keep their families intact, so the men wouldn't have to come up to a street corner in Any Town, USA,"he says. "Many leave wives and kids behind. In a lot of cases these kids end up becoming economic orphans."

Dave and his wife went out on a limb and mortgaged their house so they could buy a one-year supply of coffee at an elevated price from a few of the Oaxaca farmers, while they embarked on an ambitious program to add value to the farmers'coffee crop.

"The solution we created is to work alongside the farmers with a tropical agricultural engineer and an agronomist and obtaining a farmers organic certification,"Day says. "It gave the coffee an added dollar value in the global marketplace that we could pass along to the farmers to give them economic sustainability,"he says. Day was able to nearly triple each family's income to almost $900 per year.

Day and his advisors also started a crop diversification program and a beehive program, which increased crop yields six to eight percent. "We integrated honey into their diets instead of raw sugar,"Day says. "We also started a program for the women to hand silk-screen and paint coffee bags to create jobs for those who don't have farms,"he says. "We also started a chicken-raising and breeding program for eggs. We buy chickens in bulk and take them up to the mountains."

'Growers First' plans to expand this work to 37 new communities in another part of Oaxaca. Their goal is to branch out to three new countries in Africa and Indonesia.

In addition, Pastoral training is very needed. Day helped to start a Bible school at the base of the mountains called Rancho Soledad. "Our first student to graduate was on his way to the U.S. from Honduras to be a day laborer,"Day reports. "Our director talked to him and led him to Christ. Now he wants to return and preach the Word of God in his village."

Day also started an annual Pastors Conference drawing other coffee-growing pastors and their families from the mountains and surrounding areas. The conference has doubled in size every year, and this year 700 camped together on a sprawling cattle ranch. "It's a three-day conference that is nothing but blessing and enriching to these pastors,"Day says. "We empower them with sound Biblical teaching."

"There is still a need for the body of Christ to be involved,"Day says. "We're looking for churches to adopt each of these villages and to make a commitment to visiting twice a year for long-term ongoing relationships,"he says.

Day believes many Christian aid projects have been shortsighted in addressing economic sustainability. Most mission projects are one-sided coins," he says. "This coffee is a two-sided coin. We want to provide them a tool to catch fish, instead of giving them a hand of fishes. It's been a phenomenal opportunity to share the love of Christ."